


The Bad Sleep Well - 5 - Bodily Integrity

by sharkcar



Series: The Bad Sleep Well [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-15
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-09-01 09:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20255707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkcar/pseuds/sharkcar
Summary: An imagining of the lives of clones after the Clone Wars. Just some simple men, making their ways in the universe, in all their tragicomic glory.1- Rib- Rex does some guy stuff2- Viscera- Cody deals with women3- Soup Meat- The girl doesn't want Wolffe and Gregor treating her like a child





	1. Rib

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somebody wants to be Rex's new friend.

Yavin IV  
  
Rex hacked at some vines with his machete and continued his way through the forest in a simple rhythm; slice, shuffle, slice, shuffle. The plant life was thick and his back already ached.  
  
When he had decided to visit the archaeological site, he had thought it would be easy to find. Turned out the jungle had covered things over a bit.  
  
Rex had wanted to see the site of the duel between Asajj Ventress and a young Commander Skywalker. He had the coordinates of the place his friend had told him about in the story, but finding a suitable landing site near the ruins and actually getting over there was tricky. He had been at it for a tick or two.  
  
Ezra surprised him pouncing down out of the sky. He’d evidently been jumping through the trees to catch up.  
  
“You’re lucky I didn’t shoot you,” Rex complained, shaken. He swatted at some blood sucking bugs.  
  
“Sorry. I just wanted to come and let you know, we’re off to Mandalore in a few hours,” Ezra followed behind him.  
  
Now even Ezra and Kanan had been pulled into Mandalore’s conflicts.  
  
It made Rex want to shake his head, but what could he do? Ezra wasn’t the first guy to do something brave and stupid to impress a girl.  
  
So Rex offered what practical advice he could, “Stay away from the people who demand everyone’s attention. They’re the ones most likely to turn abusive, especially to people who are different.”  
  
Rex spoke from experience. He could defend himself in a fair fight, but he was trained to de-escalate, coming from a family full of the same tendency to alcoholism, and having logged a lot of time spent dealing with actual Mandalorians. It was the same advice he’d given his girl when she asked how to deal with bullies in her cadet boot camp. She was small, so her best chance was to stay away from fights or to keep them from escalating to outright sadism. The lesson worked just as well teaching his friend Ezra to stay out of fights if he could. Not because Ezra couldn’t win the fights, but because he would win. And then what?  
  
Rex continued walking and hacking. Ezra started walking beside him and began cutting the vines with his lightsaber. They were through in no time.  
  
They arrived at the abandoned city and walked among the Massassi ruins, examining buildings. Temples like the ones they were admiring were all over the moon, huge stone pyramids with vast hollow interiors. A few particularly large ones were being used by the Rebellion for their base.  
  
Rex was keen to see one particular temple in this area, which was dedicated to a healing god Uburluh, according to the background reading Rex had done before he’d set out. Rex checked his friend’s plan of the area and made sure they had the right structure. Ezra made short work of the vines in front of the entrance. Inside, Rex lit some flares. They found a massive decorative sculptural frieze. Rex set his helmet down in the middle of the chamber to take a 3D scan of the space for his files. He wanted to look at the carvings in more detail.  
  
He was teaching himself to carve wood, since the jungle provided more than enough raw material. He had an idea for a narrative plaque and he wanted to study how to tell a story in pictures.  
  
While the scanner was running, they just looked up at the scene.  
  
Rex decided this might be his only opportunity to speak to Ezra in private, “So I was meaning to ask you…Were you ever able to find out anything else about Kenobi? Were you able to make any sense of those visions you were yelling about?”  
  
“Nah, it was just a trick,” Ezra lied easily, “Sorry if I got anyone’s hopes up.”  
  
“That’s what I thought,” Rex ignored the sense he got that there was more to it, “You made me think about him. It actually made me really proud of what we’re doing here. I know he would have been on our side.”  
  
Rex had already decided that Ezra must not have found Kenobi. It was a much easier thing to believe than the idea that Kenobi was asked to help and he said no. Although Kenobi would have every right to choose to stay out of it, it would have driven Rex crazy trying to figure out how a person would have changed that much. He was certain he knew the man.  
  
Ezra then continued on, the way one does when one is trying to be believable, “Maybe it’s better to remember people like we experienced them. Their effect lives on in how they influenced us. Anyway, why would you need his approval? You know what you’re doing is right.”  
  
That gave Rex pause. It almost seemed as if Ezra knew what he’d been thinking. The ability to read minds was something that was only possible through using the Dark Side. It was Kenobi who had told Rex that. Rex grew a little cold, even though the air felt closer around him, suffocating him.  
  
Ezra was standing behind him and Rex was afraid to look back at him.  
  
Rex shook his head, “No. I know who he was. It wasn’t just hero worship. I knew the person he was,” Rex wasn’t sure why he didn’t think Ezra believed him.  
  
“What kind of temple is this?” Ezra changed the subject.  
  
Rex finally turned, expecting Ezra to be looking around, not directly at him. That somehow made him feel better, even though in his rational mind Rex couldn’t imagine what he had to be afraid of. Rex thought that Ezra might not even have realized what he was doing, intruding into someone’s thoughts. It was a small thing, but once the skill was honed, it could be used to forcibly pull knowledge from people’s minds by torturing them. Or even to put thoughts there. Rex doubted Ezra knew what kinds of things to look out for. Even Ezra’s trainer was barely trained.  
  
Rex took a deep breath. “A temple built by slaves,” Rex told Ezra what Skywalker had explained to him about it. The whole ruin was therefore a Dark Side place. Rex wasn’t sure why, but he felt embarrassed for having wanted to see it. It was why he didn’t invite anyone to come with him.  
  
The report Rex had on Yavin IV no doubt came from Kenobi, too. Kenobi was the historian. His briefing reports on the various planets where they served together had been some of the most riveting writing Rex had ever read. Kenobi seemed to know everything. He could really inspire by citing the historical significance of their work.  
  
“Millennia ago,” Rex began, imagining a storyboard laid out before him, “the Sith used their formidable powers against those who had none. And forced people to obey them. People lived every day knowing that they had to ask forgiveness and live in constant fear of the painful consequences. They were punished, no matter whether they were obedient or not. It wasn’t even enough that the people did what the Sith told them to, people had to heap praise on them constantly.”  
  
“Sounds familiar,” Ezra wrinkled his nose a little.  
  
“Kenobi once said, tyranny is what happens when the powerful are insecure,” Rex remembered, looking around. “They even wanted to control the kinds of stories people remembered long after they were gone.”  
  
“What does that mean?” Ezra asked.  
  
“Well, like this temple here. The efforts of all these people, some spent their whole lifetimes building it, others didn’t even survive building it. They were worked to death and buried in the foundations. But all we see are these decorations telling the story of one individual. Of course he tells the same story they always do, as if he was the best and greatest and all his people loved him. He might as well have added, smartest, handsomest, and had the biggest cock,” Rex coughed once and spat on the floor.  
  
“Well, some leaders in history must have earned respect,” Ezra looked confused, “Not everyone wants to be powerful just for selfish reasons. Power can be like carrying a weapon. You hope you don’t have to use it, but you’re glad you have it when you need it.”  
  
Rex certainly couldn’t disagree with that. He was always wearing a weapon. Still, something about the line of reasoning seemed to be leading in a direction that worried him. For instance, he thought, if only one person has the weapon, they are automatically the only one that gets to decide what kind of a situation it has to be before they ‘have to’ use it. Rex had never had much autonomy permitted to make decisions. He came from a race of people among whom the leaders had been literally selected by their creators, with no choice in the matter beyond their own demonstrable abilities. And even their leadership was kept enslaved. He could name many instances where people wielded power over his family in ways that they didn’t ‘have to’. Rex had spent a good portion of his life being shot at and he knew that every one of those people or machines had a reason to kill him that made sense to them. And most people who carried weapons weren’t the kind of people who hoped they didn’t have to use them...  
  
Ezra chuckled quietly, “I guess that’s true.”  
  
Rex was sure now he hadn’t spoken his thoughts aloud.  
  
–  
  
The next day Rex went over to the hangar where the Ghost was kept. With Kanan and the kids on Mandalore, Hera and Zeb were the only ones at home. Zeb found it awkward sharing the space alone at night, so he’d been sleeping outside in his lawn chair. Rex passed him as he headed inside the ship.  
  
“Hey, I saw your wood carving. You know how to do wood carving? How did you learn that?” Zeb, unlike Ezra, wasn’t afraid of skills that were low tech.  
  
“A little blood and a lot of patience,” Rex joked. His hands were fine, he knew to wear gloves when working with sharp tools.  
  
Rex went inside and found the captain eating some warmed frozen food.  
  
“You know I’d cook you something if you asked. There is a lot of edible vegetation,” he went and got her some water and set it down on the table along with the anti-nausea pills she had asked for. He sat beside her at the table.  
  
“Thanks, Rex. But I don’t seem to have a few minutes to spare for a meal anymore,” she took the top off the pill bottle.  
  
“Um...please read the label before you take them,” Rex asked as gently as possible.  
  
She looked. Then casually put the top back on, “I...uh...”  
  
The label had warned not to take them if you were pregnant or might become pregnant.  
  
“If you had just told me, I would have told you that I can cover for you. If you need to take a rest or need some food with nutritional value or anything. You’ll need a lot of iron in the first trimester. Have you seen a medical droid?”  
  
“Yes, of course, I got a clean bill of health at my last physical. Please don’t lecture me about how I can’t risk anything. We’re all fighting for our lives here,” she told him as if it was an order.  
  
Rex had been laughing a little. Involuntarily. But his eyes stung a little, too. She wasn’t wrong. The near-death experience at Chopper Base had left everyone a little shook.  
  
“We are, aren’t we?” Rex faked a cough to hide the laugh, “I’m so happy for you both. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help, now or in future.”  
  
She patted Rex on the arm, “Just...don’t mention it to anyone yet. The Rebellion leadership might try to tell me to stay off the front lines. We can’t afford that.”  
  
Rex always liked how Hera spoke to him. Like a friend who understood her choices, rather than an idiot.  
  
Walking back to his bunk, Rex got to thinking about his friends. He had never known many women who were pregnant. He knew Senator Amidala was pregnant when she died. As far as he knew, she didn’t talk to anyone. Everyone in her life assumed she had taken someone else into her confidence and that she’d had all the support she needed. In the end, it seemed that no one had been there to help her. Skywalker was off fighting, politicians wielded information like weapons, people were constantly trying to get close to her for selfish reasons. She didn’t have many people she could trust, maybe none. The more Rex thought about it, the more it bothered him.  
  
Where Skywalker had a temper, Rex had never seen Kanan be anything but gentle with the people he cared about. Rex was surprised to realize that he was positive Kanan would make the better father.  
  
–  
  
Rex was at the wood carving again. He had just found an old drill set and he was surprised by how fast the rotary tools could work.  
  
Kallus came out to watch him work this time. Maybe he hadn’t intended to be a pest, he was just walking around the perimeter trying to be alone.  
  
Kallus wasn’t welcome around most people on the base. He didn’t have any clothes besides his ISB uniform, so he stood out like a burning effigy. Rebels hated Imperials, even former Imperials. With Rebellion folk, most often, Imperials had killed their families, or burned their houses, or enslaved their friends. So Kallus’ sudden change of heart after he’d done those kinds of things for years wasn’t really convincing to some people. Most of them, including Rex, were wary he might be a spy.  
  
Kallus looked lonely, but not enough to move Rex to initiate a conversation with him.  
  
This time Kallus approached him, “So…Captain Rex, is it?”  
  
“You know it is,” Rex was hoping he was coming across as grumpy.  
  
“I…have been meaning to introduce myself,” Kallus sounded very nervous.  
  
“Well, we have met. You and your men tried to kill my brothers and me and then you destroyed our home,” Rex reminded him, “I’m still not dead, by the way, thanks for asking.”  
  
“Ah...yes...well...you more than made me regret that, I suppose. I didn’t realize who you were until Admiral Titus informed me about running your ID number,” Kallus looked nervous Rex might punch him.  
  
Rex had been wanting to, but he would have been embarrassed of himself. Even though he more than had cause to hate any friend of Admiral Titus. That Imperial turd had tortured him. Rex had never told anyone about that. He didn’t want to be pitied, “Yeah, I’m sure he’s forgotten my number already. Four digits are a lot to remember for some people,” Rex said instead.  
  
“Are they?” Kallus looked confused for a moment.  
  
“Yeah, nah, that’s just a little clone humor,” Rex didn’t laugh or smile though.  
  
“I have actually been well acquainted with a few of your brothers in the Imperial Security Bureau. They always spoke very highly of you,” Kallus tried.  
  
“I wish they wouldn’t speak of me at all,” Rex had heard of his brothers doing things in service of the Empire that made his skin crawl. ISB black ops death squadrons, interrogations, torture. It made it hard to be proud of his family. Rex did not easily forgive affronts to his honor like that, but he felt his anger had all the force of an old man yelling at clouds.  
  
“If it helps…I think most of your brothers were just working for the Empire because they didn’t have much choice of profession,” Kallus sat down on the rock where Rex had rested his tool box.  
  
“We all have a choice.” Rex put on his eye goggles. Titus had also offered him a job and Rex had told him where he could shove it.  
  
“I think most of them could choose only service or death. The Empire has a way of…boxing people in like that,” Kallus excused, “Threatening everything you ever cared about.”  
  
Rex raised the goggles, “Threatening? I never had one thing they didn’t just come and take but my life. And, boy did you try,” Rex gave Kallus the ‘this conversation is over’ look.  
  
Evidently Kallus didn’t know clones well enough to understand, “At least…that’s what we tell ourselves. It’s the compromise you make, one little bit at a time. Until you’re dead inside and you don’t care about anything.”  
  
“I wouldn’t know,” Rex lowered the goggles and went back to shaping the wooden figures in his composition.  
  
Kallus reached into the tool box and started to organize the drill bits by size, “Captain Rex, I fear we may have gotten off on the wrong foot…”  
  
“Perhaps,” Rex switched off the drill and lifted his goggles. He wasn’t being who he wanted to be, “Would you like to make it up to me?”  
  
“I…suppose…,” Kallus looked around suspiciously. Working for the Empire, he was probably used to being cornered.  
  
“So you worked ISB in the Outer Rim. What can you tell me about contraband? Where can I get food shipments that people will not be able to report stolen?” Rex set down the plaque, packed up his tools, and did his wash ritual. “You know, the gourmet food the Moffs have sent to them, while their people are starving or eating prepackaged rations? Or the things the smugglers sell to the highest bidders?”  
  
Kallus stroked his chin a little in thought. Rex thought it looked elegant. Rex figured he could never pull off a gesture like that. But Kallus had freckles. Like Kenobi.   
  
“And I would know this because?”  
  
“You look well fed,” Rex slapped Kallus’ chest.  
  
\--  
  
Celanon Spaceport  
  
They looked up and down the corridor and attempted to walk casually as they went down a row of doors that led to the VIP storage containers.  
  
“How do you propose to crack the door code?” Kallus asked.  
  
“Door?” Rex pulled out a crowbar from his bag and cracked the cover off of a vent. He took point and climbed in.  
  
“Don’t you know anything about burglary?” Hobbie almost scoffed as if he was a pro, “The storage units have ventilation shafts.” He climbed in.  
  
“Why?” Kallus followed him, reluctantly, then replaced the cover to position.  
  
“Damnit Sandy, haven’t you ever read product labels? Everything always says to store in a cool, dry place,” Hobbie was clearly enjoying himself.  
  
Kallus looked around, a bit disgusted, “Ugh, this is full of dust and dead insects.”  
  
“I know, most of the vents I’ve been in have been cleaner,” Rex didn’t look back.  
  
They continued to climb through on all fours. Finally, Rex came to one screen. He used the crowbar to pry it open. They all climbed out into a large storage room with crates lining both sides.  
  
Rex read the content labels of a few.  
  
“And how are we supposed to get anything back out? I thought we were here to steal food, I’m not sure I want to eat anything that’s been through the way we came in,” Kallus brushed at the sticky dust on his jacket, which only produced gray streaks. He gave up, rolled his eyes and wiped his hands on his pants.  
  
“These doors aren’t locked from the inside and the outside both. Why would they need to be?” Hobbie argued logic, “It is a warehouse, not a prison, Sandy.”  
  
“Spare me your immature Imperial Academy hazing ritual, cadet,” Kallus enunciated clearly at Hobbie, “I don’t need a nickname.”  
  
Rex found a palette of large shipping crates with the logo of a frozen goods shipping company. He looked at the labels, “Here we go. Just what I need.” He made a selection.  
  
The three of them dragged it off of the palette and switched on its anti-grav. They slowly shoved the crate towards the door. Hobbie hit the door panel and the portal hissed open. He peeked out and looked if the coast was clear. The crate took some doing getting through the door, klanging noisily. They winced communally.  
  
“I think we might have scraped one of the anti-grav hubs,” Kallus noticed as they began moving the crate along the hallway. He and Hobbie were at the back two corners and Rex walked ahead, steering.  
  
“Well that’s not good,” Hobbie squinted. Indeed, one of the back corners was hanging a bit lower than the other three.  
  
“HALT!” a voice barked behind them. They turned to see a Nalroni guard, his dog face in a snarl with his fangs and gums showing, “What are you three doing in here?”  
  
Rex thought Kallus might be able to talk their way out of it by impersonating a person who still had Imperial authority. ISB confiscated stuff all the time. Rex had been just about to tell the other two to let Kallus handle it.  
  
“Run!” Hobbie shouted suddenly. He and Kallus took off, shoving the back of the crate. Rex had to run ahead or get run over by it.  
  
They could hear the guard behind them barking for his colleagues.  
  
Rex didn’t want to shoot anyone if he didn’t have to, certainly not some hard working people like these warehouse guards, so he set his blasters to stun as he drew them.“Keep going!” he shouted and dropped suddenly. The crate flew forward with the momentum and slid right over Rex. The second it was past him, Rex sat up to firing position on one knee and pumped off twelve rapid rounds with both hands.  
  
Rex stood despite the painful protests of his knees. He jogged to catch up to the other two, growling under his breath the whole way, “Can we have ONE mission that doesn’t involve running?”  
  
An alarm started sounding.  
  
“Well, they’ll know we’re here now,” Hobbie whined loudly over the sound.  
  
Kallus shouted, “No one saw us but the stunned guards. If guards run towards us, just keep going, they’ll run to the origin of the alarm. It will take them a few minutes to ask their colleagues what to look for,” Kallus was surprisingly astute in the situation.  
  
Rex decided Kallus must have learned a lot from having incompetent Stormtroopers work for him. He holstered his blasters.  
  
Sure enough, the guards they saw all ran right on by them, while they cowered slightly and pretended to be simple workaday employees caught in the crossfire. Just for good measure, they all three shouted things like, “They’re madmen!” and “Help us!” It wasn’t a military facility, they could have been anyone. That worked for a little while, then an announcement came over the intercom in Nalroni.  
  
“What did they say?” Hobbie asked.  
  
People started to look at them.  
  
“Nothing good for us,” Kallus did not lose focus. “In here,” he pointed towards an empty corridor. Rex hit the blast door controls as he ran past. Only then did they realize that all the other passageways were shut.  
  
They heard banging and a voice came through in canine-accented Basic, “We know you’re behind the door!”  
  
They all froze for a second. Unfortunately, Hobbie was the first to recover. He affected a ridiculous accent, “Nooooo, no door heeeere! Byeeeee.”  
  
Rex facepalmed.  
  
Sparks flew from the door portal as they began to cut it.  
  
Kallus ran to another door portal and Rex followed his lead. Rex took out the crowbar and pulled the control panel off. Kallus quickly had it hotwired. They managed to get out by the skin of their teeth. Rex threw a few smoke bombs back at the guards as they burst through the diagonal aperture of the partially opened doors.  
  
The anti-grav on the one corner of the crate was worsening, so that corner kept bouncing on the floor as they pushed it along the hallway back towards the airlock where they’d parked the ship. The corridors were now full with fleeing sentients of all shapes and sizes running with them.  
  
Rex’s team were observed escaping by cameras, but the guards were not able to get through the ruckus in time.  
  
Hobbie ran ahead to start up the ship while Kallus and Rex were left to ease the crate inside. The crate was far too large for the hatch, Rex had to admit. So he shot the hinges on the crate and tossed the lid aside. It went right in.  
  
Once they were underway, Kallus looked inside the crate, “What were we stealing that was worth all that? Meat? All that for meat? It’s not even good cuts,” he lifted a packet and scowled, “Sausages? Ground meat? Ribs? Who takes ribs?”  
  
Rex raised an eyebrow, “You haven’t had my ribs.”  
  
Hobbie set it on auto pilot and came back to see what the haul was.  
  
“Is there anything we can sell? We’re running low on fuel,” he told them.  
  
“We can stop at the shopping center on Junction,” Rex replied.  
  
“Oh boy! Biscuit Baron!” Hobbie shouted, only half sarcastically.  
  
“Good, maybe I can get some new clothes at last,” Kallus was deadly serious. He had probably been wearing an Imperial uniform his whole life.  
  
Hobbie looked through the contents of the crate and paused for a moment. He saw a rather large packet of ground meat, not machine packed like the rest, but hand wrapped in plastic film. He picked it up and put it on the floor. Kallus looked confused. Rex drew the crowbar out of his bag and beat the packet three good thwacks. It cracked open and three hundred thousand Imperial credits fell out.  
  
Yavin IV  
  
Rex said he didn’t feel like it was right if they just used their windfall irresponsibly. They took a vote and decided that Rex’s suggestion was the best one. They went to Junction and bought enough food to let the whole base have a decent meal.  
  
Rex didn’t think it would hurt anybody if he took some of the money and bought Kallus a new set of clothes. People immediately acted less hostile towards him. At the event at the Rebel base that night, Kallus was actually able to talk to people a bit, since he helped to prepare and serve dinner. Rex taught him how to work the grill he’d rigged up.  
  
Once eating had died down, Kallus brought Rex a drink, while Rex cooked up the last of the food over low coals. Everyone would have a good lunch with the leftovers the next day, but finding space in the refrigerated containers was going to be a nightmare. Hobbie was supervising cleanup and attempting to use his clout as provider of the meal to impress girls.  
  
“So, Captain Rex, I was told that once you were caught behind enemy lines, you snuck through an enemy camp full of droids and shot a dozen in the neck without being detected. Then you just walked out on the other side with some of their blasters.”  
  
“I’m sure it’s greatly exaggerated,” Rex was drinking from what appeared to be a tin cup.  
  
“Oh no, I believe not. It was told to me by none other than the infamous Commander Cody. He claimed to have been there when you walked back into camp,” Kallus maintained.  
  
Rex struggled to keep a straight face. Cody’s decision to join the Empire was one of the most pitiable things Rex had ever seen, “How is my brother?”  
  
“Oh, no one’s seen him for years. When he was in the ISB, he was in the Emperor’s inner circle, but he was gradually cut out. Then I heard he was sent off.”  
  
“I haven’t kept up on the news where I was,” Rex confessed.  
  
“I knew him in the ISB, and…permission to be frank…,” Kallus seemed a bit nervous to say something offensive.  
  
“O…kay?” Rex braced for the impact of something ignorant.  
  
Kallus surprised Rex, “You two are nothing alike.”  
  
“I consider that a compliment,” Rex scratched the back of his neck.  
  
Kallus chuckled nervously, “So you know? He was the most corrupt asset in the agency. And he was ruthless.”  
  
“I’m sure he was proud of it,” Rex shook his head a little.  
  
“He seemed to be,” Kallus nodded.  
  
“So were you friends?” Rex realized as soon as he said it, that it sounded like he was accusing Kallus. Maybe he was.  
  
“Well, he didn’t really socialize much. But he took a liking to insulting me whenever he saw me. He’d insist I drink with him sometimes. He’d tell war stories. I remember him as kind of a bully,” Kallus admitted.  
  
“Too much of our father in him. I don’t have anything left to say to him,” Rex told him.  
  
“Fair enough. I suppose that’s why I left the Empire. There was no one left there that I had anything to say to. So how were you able to keep your focus and never...do things that made you hate yourself?”  
  
Rex considered, “I don’t do things based on how it makes me feel about myself.” He sipped from his cup. The coals of the fire threw light against his face in the dark.  
  
Kallus surprised him, “I, um...wanted to thank you. You know it’s still strange with the people here. They don’t trust me, I know. I…understand.”  
  
“And I do trust you?” Rex chuckled softly.  
  
“Well, no, I mean, you don’t…have to. I just thought….” Kallus actually sounded hurt.  
  
“Look, it’s nothing personal, I see how you could use a friend, but our trust has to be earned. I can’t help you justify any part of the Imperial point of view. It was wrong before, it’s wrong now. Nevertheless, I guess, since we are gonna be working together, it would be preferable for me if we could be friends.” Rex admitted, “I’m not gonna start calling you Sandy, don’t worry.”  
  
“You...could call me Alexsandr,” Kallus widened his eyes slightly.  
  
Rex paused, “We’ll see.”  
  
“You and Zeb are good friends. Has he ever talked to you about me?” Alexsandr practically whispered.  
  
Rex smiled involuntarily, “Wait, now it all makes sense. You’re hairier now because you got a…thing…for….Zeb? You...came here...for Zeb,” Rex knew he was right, “Does he go that way?”  
  
“I…I thought I was sure he wouldn’t feel the same. But lately I’ve been getting...I don’t know...signals. I don’t want to assume. I’ve always been terribly awkward in this regard,” Alexsandr explained. “There was a lot of bullying in the Imperial Academy of people like me. I saw what happened to boys who risked telling anyone or having relationships. It usually ended up with someone getting beaten up if not assaulted in other ways. It’s very hard for me to…”  
  
Rex nodded, not making him articulate more than he wanted to.  
  
“How did you know?” Kallus asked.  
  
“I’ve seen that look a thousand different times on a thousand different guys’ faces,” Rex shook his head.  
  
“Have you ever been in love?” Kallus asked.  
  
Rex didn’t really want to answer, “Depends on how you define it. The Mon Cala have five different types. Passion, friendship, selflessness, patience, self-respect, and play. I always liked that.”  
  
“Play?” Kallus was looking right at him.  
  
“Haven’t you ever played with a baby or a pet? It’s how they look up at you, trusting you mean it in fun. It is its own kind of love,” Rex was worried he was explaining it inelegantly.  
  
“You’ve been to Mon Cala?” Kallus asked.  
  
Rex wasn’t sure whether or not Alexsandr’s interest in him was making him feel flattered or old, “I got to meet King Lee Char at the banquet after his coronation ceremony. Senator Amidala brought me as her security detail. I was wearing some borrowed scuba gear and at one point, I had to guard the door of the royal submarine of Queen Julia of Bardotta while she entertained Representative Binks for a few rounds of ‘Slow Movement Exercises’,” Rex answered as modestly as he could saying something so ridiculously improbable sounding.  
  
“Is there anyone you didn’t know?” evidently Kallus believed him.  
  
“Doesn’t seem like it sometimes. It’s a small universe,” Rex admitted.  
  
Zeb came walking over with an empty plate, “Guys, that was fantastic.”  
  
“How’s your back?” Rex asked.  
  
“Stiff. You know, back in the Guard, when we had rough conditions during training, we used to give each other back massages,” Zeb mentioned.  
  
Rex recognized a pickup line when he heard one. “You heard him, Kallus, give the man a back rub,” Rex joked.  
  
Later, after cleanup was over and everyone was heading to bed, Rex was sure he overheard, “You know, you probably just need a good night’s sleep. I have an extra bed in my quarters.”  
  
Alexsandr was not at his cot in the barracks in the morning, Rex noticed.


	2. Viscera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After coming up empty on his mission, Cody has to deal with some difficult truths.

Rishi  
  
Cody's ship, The Whiskeysnap, landed in the main hangar bay. Cody let the “Intelligence Service” descend the ramp first. He observed them quickly ambling towards the lifts, looking at the ground like house pets who knew they were in trouble for pissing on carpets.  
  
Cody envied them for a second. They were getting off easy. He braced for what he was sure would be the emotional equivalent of a beheading.  
  
The queen was there alone as she probably had been for hours, maybe days. Her hair was loose, her eyes were red from lack of sleep and the sting of tears. She looked in askance. She read his face. She fell to her knees, the generous folds of her cloak surrounding her, one hand at her mouth to stifle the scream, the other touching the ground as if bracing against impact.  
  
Cody rushed to her and knelt in front of her to face her, gently taking her hands in his. “No,” he whispered, “She’s alive. She ran away before we got there, but she’s still alive.”  
  
Lina wrapped her arms around his neck, digging her fingers into his flesh, “Cody, you have to find her!”  
  
He held her close and stroked her back and repeated the same phrase over and over, “I know.”  
  
–  
  
Lina cried privately for hours when he came home without her daughter. She didn’t feel like speaking and there was nothing more to say. Cody didn’t know what else to do but be there, with his arm wrapped around her as the flood rose and fell.  
  
She was quiet the next day. And very, very tired. Her shoulders slouched, her brow furrowed. Still she went about her business as if nothing was happening. When he asked if there was anything she needed, she apologized and said she didn’t want to scare the kids.  
  
Cody told his wife what had happened, how Alis had gotten away. Alis would find out soon that she should not to return to Concord Dawn.  
  
Cody didn’t tell Lina what he’d learned about Rex. He didn’t know why. He should have. He felt bad about it the instant he left it out. Yet, some unknown compulsion gripped the voice in his throat. The moment passed and it was too late afterwards. If he told her then, he would have to answer the inevitable question of why. Cody didn’t have an answer he liked.  
  
He worried it had been out of panic. He had been telling Lina all these years that she could not see her child without losing him or both of them. Cody was sure stories about Rex just waltzing on to Concord Dawn and taking Alis out for a feed every other week would undermine his credibility to a fair degree. It was hard to make natural born people understand that clones weren’t all the same person. Cody told himself that wasn’t it. That Lina was just emotional at the moment and he was trying to spare her feelings from being overwhelmed. Lina didn’t need any more stress. He wasn’t so sure that was a good enough excuse either.  
  
Since he was already in too deep, he commed his most reliably insightful friend to help dig him out of it. They made an appointment for the next day.  
  
\--  
  
Gar Saxon was publicizing his victory in the galactic outlets on the holo-net by the time the kids had left for school. All of the Mandalorian houses were wondering which one would be next to cave to Saxon’s will, which would be next to be snuffed out.  
  
“Where will she go? She won’t even know to come here,” Lina finally told him as they watched the holo-net propaganda on the view screen in the dining room. The existence of their colony was necessarily kept secret to keep out invaders. If the girl tried to look her mother up in the Imperial databanks, it would just say she was sent to prison, not the location or whether she was alive at all. Everything else they might know was classified.  
  
Tiber Saxon was on praising his brother’s super-human heroics in the “Shock and Awe” campaign on Concord Dawn. He sang a song he’d written about it. Tibey went on to state that Fenn Rau was a ‘loser’ and used a bunch of other childish nicknames including, but not restricted to, ‘crazy Fenn,’ ‘lying Fenn’, and of course ‘little pilot man’. Nothing new there, authoritarian propaganda was always the same. So it faded into background noise.  
  
Cody took Lina’s hand, “She’s still alive as far as we know. But she will be scared and she may run if she’s approached by strangers. And we don’t even know what she looks like now.”  
  
“Shouldn’t I be out looking then?” Lina asked a practical question.  
  
“Look, it’s not that you’re not right, but I think there is a cautious way to do this.”  
  
Lina didn’t have to speak. She looked in his eyes to wordlessly ask the question about what he was doing next.  
  
“I can’t exactly put out a bounty for her safe return. We don’t need bounty hunters, those clowns are reckless. Kark forbid Boba get word of it. He hates the rest of us jar babies. He’d hunt her to kill for sure,” Cody was worried Lina was going to ask why he had so damn many people who hated him. “No, I have sent my own investigators to discreetly retrieve that bartender droid who has her facial recognition scan in his circuits,” Cody reassured her.  
  
“Who?” Lina did not look reassured.  
  
–  
  
Salin Corridor bound for the Mandalore sector  
  
*singing* “If you wanna burn a village join the Deathwatch,” *clap clap* “If you wanna rape and pillage join the Deathwatch,” *clap clap*  
  
“Okay, so here, I’m gonna throw the cape over my shoulder dramatically as I strut forward. Then I shoot a guy in the head, never breaking stride,” Stabbi was playing Pre Visla. He demonstrated the strut-toss, shoot-stride.  
  
“Pre Visla sounded more nasaly, so exaggerate that more,” Victory directed. He was playing Maul, wearing a headband with horns on it. His number in the musical play was a sad song about how the worst part of being chopped in half was that he no longer had a penis.  
  
–  
  
Rishi  
  
That night, Cody had a dream. That was nothing out of the ordinary. He often had stress nightmares. His entire life had been one big long life or death situation. He was certain he had Post-Traumatic Stress, its symptoms were practically the culture of his people. But there were certain dreams, different in a way that was indescribable but easily recognizable. The only time in Cody’s waking life that he had ever had a feeling that matched the sense of these dreams was when he had heard one phrase spoken by one voice. “Execute Order Sixty-Six.” Like the phrase was, the dreams were compelling.  
  
Cody had never told anyone about them, they would merely assume they were his own impulses and inquire about his mental health. He didn’t want to sound paranoid, but he knew the threat mind control posed, he’d experienced it firsthand. Cody wasn’t sure he wanted people to know just how dangerous he would be if he ever lost control.  
  
In the dream, he found himself walking in to his own bedroom, where he found Rex alone with his wife. As he had been. Young and strong, with his perfect face. He was holding Lina the way Cody knew he must have done long ago. Her face was streaked with tears. She put her forehead to his, touched his face and whispered, “I’ve missed you so much.”  
  
Cody screamed at them with rage, reached for his blaster and shot his brother dead. Then he reached for his wife, hands around her throat. He threw her across the room and smashed her face into a mirror, the shards of glass rained down, sharp and bloody as she fell to the floor and braced against the impact.  
  
He jolted awake.  
  
He awoke and found himself in his bed, as unsettled as if his wife had seen what he had. But Lina was asleep peacefully beside him. Whiskeysnap was scowling at their feet, offended by the disturbance. Cody picked up his pet and put her between them. The tooka stretched out on her back and he scratched the soft fur of her armpits as she purred and her scaly talons pawed. Cody lay back down and tried to get back to sleep. The night was warm, so Lina had kicked off the blanket, her dark eyelashes visible against her cheeks that rose and fell as she breathed. Strands of hair adhered to her cheeks from drying where the tears had stuck them, looking like cracks in in a speeder windscreen after a crash.  
  
–  
  
Rishi Prison Mine, Ten years before...  
  
“Can I ask you something?” Lina sat across from him, in front of his desk in his warden’s office in a chair, wearing her prisoner jumpsuit with her number on it. Her hair tied up in a gray kerchief, stained with sweat from the heat of the prison kitchen. Strands of hair escaped and stuck to her skin with the dirt and sweat. Behind her chair was Otis, a prison guard droid that Cody’d ordered to escort her when she brought his meals to him. Ostensibly, it was there to protect him, but she didn’t really pose any kind of a threat to him. He hoped a chaperon would prove to her he had no ill intent.  
  
“Have I ever said no to you? We’re friends aren’t we?” Cody wore his warden uniform, including gloves, and insignia of rank. He poured her a drink.  
  
She took it gratefully, “If we were friends, you’d let me out of here.”  
  
“It’s not that easy, I would get in a lot of trouble,” Cody chuckled casually.  
  
She took a gulp and put the cup back on the table, “Nobody said friendship was easy. Admit it, you’d risk your own life to escape if you were held against your will. You’ve done that enough times in your career, I’m sure. If I saw my chance, I’d probably take it.”  
  
“What’s stopping you?” he gestured for the door. The first ten years of his life, Cody had never been able to escape from anything he’d been subjected to. She had it easy, if you asked him. At least she’d had a life before.  
  
“I haven’t thought of anything yet. Not all of us are trained strategists,” she made it sound friendly, as if she was joking.  
  
“Who said I’m not held against my will? There is no escape, not for any of us. I’ve seen what the Empire does to people who defy them,” he shook his head.  
  
“Are you afraid of anything they can do to you?” she folded her hands in her lap and looked right at him.  
  
“If you would allow me to be honest, I’m afraid of what they’ll do to you. All of you here. At least in this facility, with me in charge...at least here, I can protect you,” Cody told her what he’d told himself was his duty.  
  
“Protect me from what? They took my child. There is nothing anyone could devise that is worse than that,” she looked down.  
  
One year later...Rishi, the Village of Screw You Palpatine  
  
“I’m filling out this wedding certificate,” Cody brought them both cups of caf and a datapad in the new house they had built together.  
  
Lina was looking over a plan of the plumbing system of the facility to see what they could do to add hot water pipes to the surface above. Everyone was moving above ground and abandoning the prison. “Okay. Why do we need that?” she didn’t look up.  
  
“I plan on entering it into the Imperial databank to make it a legal union,” Cody sipped at his mug. He tried to hide his excitement.  
  
She finally lowered the datapad to look at him, “Why is this so important to you? You hate the Empire.”  
  
“I am still officially the ranking Imperial bureaucrat here on Rishi. They’ve never replaced me, even though they sent a letter of reprimand when we hijacked their supply ships. So it means anything I submit to their databanks is legal in my jurisdiction. They outlawed marriage for clones, so I want to do it. To have it on the books. It’s a statement of recognition. What do you want your last name to be?” he continued typing. He already had big plans.  
  
“Why do I even need one anymore?” Lina asked. Rishi was remote and they were living only slightly above subsistence level trying to become self-sustaining. The status of the pumpkin crop in the communal garden had become a subject of incessant small talk.  
  
“For instance, in case we ever need travel documents,” Cody tried to be persuasive. It wasn’t his best talent. It was in fact a good reason why he had enlisted her help to turn the prison colony into a settlement and tell the Empire to slag off.  
  
“Hey, maybe I could make something up,” she went back to her work, “How does Queen Agatha the Thirth sound?”  
  
“Oh, so we’re going to let people all pick their own names? Trust me, that’s a disaster, o Queen of my heart,” Cody joked.  
  
“I guess on your official documents they used your number. That’s dehumanizing,” she shook her head.  
  
“That’s why I legally changed it when I got my manumission papers from the army,” Cody remembered.  
  
“What to?” Lina asked.  
  
“Commander Cody,” he admitted.  
  
“Wait, what?” she looked up, thinking he was joking.  
  
“The bureaucrat caught me off guard. He asked my name and I said it and he just typed it in like that,” Cody explained.  
  
Lina cocked an eyebrow, “And you were too prideful or full of social anxiety to fix it?”  
  
Cody frowned, “No, he mistakenly put it in at first as ‘Cody Commander’, so I corrected him and he decided that I meant that’s what I was changing it to. I could not make him understand that I wasn’t there to change my name from ‘Cody Commander’ to ‘Commander Cody’, so I just left it.”  
  
Lina shook her head slowly, “So your first name is ‘Commander’?”  
  
“Yes, now do you want to take my name or are you keeping yours?” he tried to get back on track.  
  
“Wait, you want me to take your name…and your last name is….Cody?” she refused to be led.  
  
She was enjoying this way too much, Cody thought, “Stop laughing.”  
  
She didn’t, “Well, I can’t take that. That would just sound silly. What if we had kids. Would everybody be named after you?”  
  
“Well what would you call them?” Cody let it pass as part of the joke. All clones of Jango Fett were as sterile as he was. They were merely bantering about an impossible hypothetical.  
  
“Why can’t they take my name?” she joked.  
  
“Grady?” he asked, wrinkling his nose a bit. He’d always hated the sound of it.  
  
Lina did the same, “No, that was my ex-husband’s name.”  
  
“So what is your maiden name?” Cody was surprised to realize he’d never asked her.  
  
“Tarkin,” she said matter of factly.  
  
“What?” Cody felt a little nauseated. Old Wilhuff had that effect on him.  
  
“I’m from Eriadu, farmers there take their names from the owners of the estates we farmed on. So most of us are Tarkin,” she explained. “Although, there was some rumor that my mother’s mother had been raped by Wilhuff’s father, so we might actually be related, who knows?”  
  
“Well, I’m not naming anyone that. I don’t want to hear that name again. I don’t even want to think of him when I think of you. Ugh, no last names for us, then,” Cody put down the datapad.  
  
Lina went on, “I mean the ego on you, ‘Hi, I’m Commander Cody, this is my wife Mrs. Cody, and my children who are all named after me. Talk about dehumanizing.”  
  
Cody picked up his caf and headed out of the room to go and find something productive to do, “Fine, I won’t do it.”  
  
Whiskeysnap followed  
  
Lina shouted after him, “Why don’t we all get assigned numbers. Hi, I’m Cody, this is my wife, Cody 2, and my children, Codys 3 through 6.”  
  
Grumbling from the hall, “The rule back on Kamino was you were what other people named you, unless you could confidently beat them in a fight.”  
  
“Then you’ve got to be what I name you,” she called, “I can pin you to the mat any time.”  
  
She had called him ‘Cody Commander’ for a week after that. In front of his brothers. Nobody else joined in, though. Brothers knew better than trying to fight him.  
  
Cody had gone on to name his first born son Al’verde Kote, which was just his own name literally translated into Mando’a for the sake of being extra. Then Cody insisted on calling him Junior. Cody’s human sequel was brilliant and handsome and just exactly like his mother.  
  
–  
  
Cody never filed the paperwork. Lina was right, they were who they said they were. Cody wondered why it bothered him that the Empire, or its records could somehow phase him out of existence if they wanted, though. The Empire surely had the means to turn their city into the ruin of a mysterious lost civilization. Cody wanted records of what he’d accomplished, building something instead of destroying it. So as a coping mechanism, he founded his own bureaucracy and diplomatic service. He had never imagined it would turn into such a successful endeavor, blossoming into a full fledged government. Cody had come to find that people were craving some efficiency. They needed leadership that worked. Like a system where public servants did literally anything besides enrich themselves. Since he was sure his own reputation would not be good marketing, he had asked his popular wife to be head of state. As for the head of the bureaucracy, Cody had made other arrangements.  
  
–  
  
Present- Eighteen years after the war  
  
Occupying Cody’s old wardens’ office and apartment from his days in the prison was now the Queendom’s Prime Ministra. Niki was the chief operating officer of their colony and its communal business endeavors, which some might have defined as criminal. Like any crime boss worth their salt, Niki liked living in a place where it took at least six levels of security clearance to get in or out. She had set up booby traps in places for her own amusement. Like a funhouse.  
  
Cody had access through the security, mostly because he was the one she called to take out her trash. Cody didn’t care to recall all the figurative meanings that had come to cover. He’d cleaned up bodies, aggressively negotiated contracts, ejected scum that were wasting her time, planned assassinations, and literally had to deal with her garbage because she was too squeamish to go open the chute herself.  
  
After the war, Niki Esyella became somewhat famous around Coruscant for her scandalous affairs. She was widely assumed to be nothing more than a high class call girl and a tawdry gold digger, but she had segued the attention into celebrity, making her way on to a popular Twi’lek holo-novella. With the proceeds, she’d founded a small production company to provide her a front for her criminal activities. She brokered surplus weapons sales, financed entertainment endeavors, ran drugs. Crime was tolerated in the capital, but the fact that Niki used her profits to back anti-Imperial terrorist groups caught the special attention of the authorities. Especially since such resistance groups were denied to exist by the government. Niki was carted off to prison on charges that she was inciting the youth with inappropriate song lyrics and pornography.  
  
She had just the skill set Cody needed to grow his unorthodox organization on Rishi, so she’d been an important person for him to track down. Cody had never seen a person who could hustle like Niki. She always knew more about other people than they could tell about her. It was why Cody had put her in charge of his organization. To her, he and everyone else was a commodity, but at least clones were a brand for which she had a lot of affection.  
  
Cody knew he needed someone who would be as critical of himself as he was in his own head. There was only one person in the galaxy who hated him like that.  
  
Her face was livid when he came through the door.  
  
He didn’t know what he was going to say for himself. So he stalled, “I know what you’re going to say, Auntie.”  
  
“Don’t tell me what I was gonna say!” Niki’s red lipstick frowned at him, “Cody, when the hell are you gonna turn in your expense reports.”  
  
“I told Sotna I’d do it,” Cody grumbled, “She didn’t have to complain to mommy.”  
  
“Sotna is tired of waiting for them, so she handed the account over to a tougher collection agency,” Niki generally treated clones like her pets, “I have to insist on accountability.” She had said it as ‘accownabeeleetee’. All these years among clones and she still kept her own thick Ryloth accent instead of slipping into something more jang sounding. “You probably haven’t even finished your speech yet for the dedication of the new park,” she pinched the bridge of her nose in an unconscious imitation of Cody.  
  
“I was supposed to write something?” Cody had thought his wife would be speaking, but he supposed that would sound insensitive to say.  
  
“You’d better be joking!” she threw some blank expense reports at him.  
  
“Of course I am,” Cody dodged and bluffed, “You don’t think I’d cock this up. Have any p.r. advice for me?”  
  
“My advice is that you just say what you feel for once. You can’t come across as emotionless,” Niki had been an actress her whole life, as a former slave, her very life had depended on playing harmless, so she knew how to convey to an audience, “It will go a long way if you show how Bly’s story affected you.”  
  
“Got it. Already know what I’m going to say. Niki...may I ask you for a favor?” Cody hazarded.  
  
“No. But that never stopped you before,” she threw a very efficient barb.  
  
“I know I told you when you first came here, that I would NEVER make you answer any questions, complete independence, that’s what you wanted.” Cody tread lightly, “I wouldn’t have put you in this position if I didn’t trust how you would run things. You have the best instincts I’ve ever seen.” Praise always helped, he’d found. “But I do have to ask you if you might perhaps answer a question voluntarily?”  
  
“You may ask. Doesn’t mean I’ll answer,” Niki shrugged and looked away, tossing a green lek over her shoulder.  
  
“I will turn in my expense reports, I will do anything else once Lina’s feeling better. I wouldn’t ask, except that...it’s not about me,” Cody hoped Niki wouldn’t feel the need to get personally involved. Once she was involved in something, it quickly became public knowledge. Cody didn’t want his family business becoming an affair of state.  
  
“I’m listening,” she said. Her lekku twitched impatiently.  
  
Cody took a deep breath, “Where did Rex and Wolffe go?”  
  
Niki continued to look at the wall, her profile framed by the shelf behind her. Her chin tilted down slightly. “All these years and this still bothers you?” she sounded disappointed.  
  
“I wasn’t allowed to ask you things, remember? This is the first time I’ve needed to know,” Cody saw no use in trying to lie. “Besides, this is the first time I’ve had a confirmed sighting.”  
  
“I thought you said the Imperials had arrested Rex a few months ago...” Niki never forgot anything.  
  
Cody leveled with her, “But that could have been any brother mistaken for him. This latest sighting is real and specific. He’s really alive. And somehow allied himself with Fenn Rau, head of the very former Protectors of Concord Dawn. I don’t know what they’re up to, but I think if we go to investigate in the sector, we might be able to find Rau.”  
  
“Okay, I will authorize an expense account,” she nodded.  
  
Cody breathed a sigh of relief, “Already done. I sent Vic and the boys to take care of it after they go pick something up for me.”  
  
Concord Dawn, the Mandalore Sector  
  
“All I’m wondering is,” Victory descended the landing ramp of the shuttle.  
  
The “Intelligence Service” followed him towards the cantina.  
  
“If Duchess Satine and Bo Katan are sisters...” Vic went on.  
  
Stabbi waved a palm and they walked around to the rear of the building. There were half a dozen Saxon clan members out back having a piss. Stabbi nodded, “I know what you’re gonna say.”  
  
“Why do they have such different accents? Who is faking the funk, so to speak?” Sh’ehn nodded as they drew pistols and shot the Saxon clan members while their faces were turned to the wall they were pissing on.  
  
They quickly suited up in the Supercommando armor.  
  
“Maybe they were raised in different places or something? Like Satine went to fancy boarding school and Bo not?” Goran suggested. They tossed the bodies of Saxon’s men behind a wall out of sight.  
  
“Or maybe Bo Katan wanted to sound more hoi polloi, like Pre,” Stabbi suggested.  
  
They walked around to the front of the building and went in the front entrance with their helmets on.  
  
Since he was playing an Imperial Supercommando, Victory knew he had to be believable as an asshole, “Hey guys,” he said to the masqueraded “Intelligence Service”, “Look what we got here, a droid.”  
  
They all went in and menaced the bartender. The ‘other’ Saxon men ignored it or merely chuckled.  
  
“Hey droid,” Stabbi said in a manner that dripped with sarcastic friendship.  
  
“Hey, let’s take him out for target practice,” Sh’ehn laughed.  
  
So they did. Nobody said a thing.  
  
–  
  
Rishi  
  
“Cody!” Niki’s lekku were jabbing her in the back she was so mad.  
  
“But you won’t be mad when you hear why...” he was worried she would scratch him.  
  
“The last time you did this, it cost us four hundred thousand grams of spice just for explosives to blow up a statue on Pzob,” she complained.  
  
“Those Gamorreans were being forced to worship the ‘Divine Emperor’. The next step was going to be making them send most of their food to the garrison the Empire planted there, just because it’s the ‘god’s will’. I felt it shouldn’t come to that,” Cody defended his actions.  
  
“Exactly, you felt. I’m not here for your feelings,” Niki smiled at him dangerously.  
  
“That investment may pay dividends later, the Gomorreans view us very positively,” Cody thought as he spoke.  
  
“Hmmm, maybe a new market for our propaganda entertainment at the very least. We could redub some of our animated programs. Alright, keep talking to my purse. Why should I help you find Rex and Fenn Rau?”  
  
“There is no financial benefit. I need to know where Rex might be because I think he might know where my wife’s daughter is, okay?” Cody knew only the truth would do, but he would have to stand the ridicule that came with it.  
  
Niki cackled cruelly and for way too long, “You have always had the rottenest luck.”  
  
“So will you help me or not?” Cody’s face remained serious.  
  
“Of course I will, my darling. Consider me officially involved,” she admired her perfect nails.  
  
Great, thought Cody, just what he’d wanted to avoid, “Niki….Lina can’t know about him. At least not until I see where we’re at.”  
  
Niki looked at Cody and flicked her lekku in a gesture of admonishment, “Insecurity makes you look weak, Cody, it’s not a good look on you.” She had just eviscerated him as efficiently as a vibro blade. Then her expression grew wicked. “I’ll tell you where he went, but first you must figure out my riddle...”  
  
“Niki, can we please be serious. Time is of the essence. The girl is on the run on her own and out there. She might be trying to get to Rex. If I can find them, I might be able to get them both back here safely,” Cody put the absolute best spin on it he could, “We might even be able to find all of them.”  
  
The room chilled with her expression. After a moment, she spoke.  
  
“I hate you,” she said for no reason that was immediately apparent but was so familiar to them as to be committed to muscle memory.  
  
Cody smirked. He knew she would help him, “I know.”  
  
Coruscant, Seventeen years before  
  
Cody wrapped his arm around her and kissed her neck, “Please stay.”  
  
Niki sat up suddenly and began to dress. “That’s two thousand. I’m going to need it now, I’ve got to go.”  
  
“What?” Cody found it a difficult transition.  
  
“I need my money,” she checked herself in a mirror.  
  
Cody dressed quickly, “You can’t tell me that meant nothing to you.”  
  
“It’s none of your business what I was feeling, or why I did it. You asked and you said you could pay,” she remembered exactly.  
  
“Look, I don’t want you to go,” Cody hated how pathetic he sounded so much it made him want to slap himself.  
  
“I think this was a mistake. Keep your goddamn money,” she strapped on her shoes.  
  
Cody took the credits out of a box. He snatched her by the wrist and forced the credits into her hand. “There, take them. It’s all you were ever good for.”  
  
“Cody, you’re hurting me,” she said. He realized she was crying and let go. But the harm was done. The floodgates of her anger had been opened.  
  
Her gray eyes flashed in the low lights. “You know I don’t even like you. I stayed friends with you because I liked your brothers and they always told me you were okay. But you’re messed up, Cody,” her gestures were agitated.  
  
“I’m messed up? Have you looked in a mirror lately? You loved Wolffe and he was even more messed up than me. He and I were practically the same and you won’t even give me a chance,” Cody loomed to feel more powerful.  
  
“Love doesn’t work like that,” she walked for the door, trembling as if she was afraid.  
  
“You know what your problem is? You came to work with us, to interact with us, to sleep with us. You have no idea what you meant to any of us and you just don’t care. You must have been the first time for hundreds of brothers. You were everybody’s fantasy and you just sucked up the adulation. Then as soon as it wasn’t fun, you abandoned us. All I wanted was some company and you treat me like I disgust you. Is it a crime to want to escape, to commiserate? Your heart is so empty,” Cody felt as helpless as a child. A child he wanted to kick to death.  
  
She half turned and lowered her chin, “You always treated me like a whore, so that’s what you get. You want to know why I loved Wolffe? Because even though he knew everything about me, I could see in his eyes that I was wonderful to him. And you want to know why I bothered to screw you just now, it was because my heart was ripped out when he left and I knew it would feel a little like being with him again. It didn’t make me feel better, it made me feel worse. Now I can’t stand your face.” She always knew exactly what nerve would hurt the worst.  
  
She composed herself and walked out of there.  
  
–  
  
Milagro, seven years later.  
  
The prison warden’s apartment had six levels of security to get in. The heavy canons made short work of the doors all at once. The warden of the women’s prison stood helplessly as the well-armed squad of clones entered.  
  
There he had Niki, naked, no longer allowed her prison uniform and forced to remain in the Imperial warden’s private quarters. When the door blew open, the sight of her stopped all the men dead in their tracks like they’d had a collective epiphany.  
  
“Cody!” she said like a damsel in rapture.  
  
“C.C.!” Cody said breathlessly as she ran towards him. He opened his arms to receive her. Instead, she grabbed his sidearm from his holster and turned suddenly, firing off seven rounds into the warden’s dick as he screamed a horrible racket. Her lekku were pointed at her back so hard she drew blood. She stood over the warden to watch him die, breathing heavily, her shoulders rising and falling. All of the men present stood stupefied.  
  
Niki turned and handed Cody his gun, gripping it with two fingers in disgust as if it was a dead rodent, “I think I might have some unresolved anger issues.” She walked out of there just as she was, head held high.  
  
Niki insisted that she wanted to live on her own when they brought her to Rishi. After spending her whole life being degraded and abused and forced to smile for survival, having power was everything to her. She didn’t apologize for it.  
  
Cody knew better than to fight her so to prove he had no ill intent, he put her in charge of the money.  
  
–  
  
Above Ryloth, a month later  
  
“Where are we going,” the little girl asked Cody in Twi’leki.  
  
“To see a friend of mine, she wants to meet you,” Cody told her gently. He used the proper sign language that would give the sense of his meaning, since he didn’t have lekku to speak the language properly. He was happy she was coming with him, he indicated.  
  
“Is she going to be my new mommy?” Sotna asked, “My daddy told me that he couldn’t afford to keep me, so he was going to find me a new daddy to adopt me.” She twitched her lekku like she was scared. She hugged her blankee tight. It was just a rag of ryll calico. The kind of fabric commonly used for cheap clothes on Ryloth. The kind of thing that ended up on junk piles and being found by poor little beggar girls who liked to play pretend.  
  
Sotna’s father had been selling her on the holo-net to the highest bidder. He had advertised that she was an intact virgin, which was supposed to assure potential buyers that she was safe from venereal disease and therefore increase her price. Cody had brought the cash to the transaction and shot her father dead as soon as Sotna was given over to him. Cody didn’t feel the need to scare her with that particular detail, he’d asked her to keep her eyes closed as they walked out of the dingy hotel.  
  
If you asked Cody, what he’d done was kind. That man was either irredeemably soulless or he would spend the rest of his life sick with regret.  
  
Cody knelt down next to Sotna, “That’s a nice doll. What’s her name?”  
  
“It’s my baby. Her name is Buttercup,” Sotna smoothed Buttercup’s edge and showed him.  
  
Cody wasn’t sure how far he had to buy into the game so as not to hurt her feelings. So he just nodded like he was impressed and said, “Very nice.”  
  
That seemed to satisfy her enough.  
  
Niki was waiting in the hangar when Cody arrived on Rishi. She had a datapad and looked about ready to fill out bureaucratic forms in his blood.  
  
“Cody! Why in the unholy KARK did you take a million credits out of the reserves!” she was looming, teetering on six inch heels.  
  
“I just borrowed it,” Cody handed her the case back.  
  
Then she saw the girl. The little girl from the holo-net. The one in the picture from the auction site, whose expression had made her cry involuntarily during a meeting one day.  
  
In that little girl’s face Niki had suddenly been reminded of something a lifetime ago. Of a little beggar girl on a junk pile pretending to nurse her ‘baby Dorothy’.  
  
She couldn’t believe such barbaric things were still happening. She thought she’d recovered and hidden it before Cody had seen. Sneaky as he was, though, Cody had made sure to know what she was upset about.  
  
He understood about being unable to talk about some things. That oaf had hacked her holo-net view history and run off to do this crazy stunt alone. He had saved the little girl’s whole life and laid it at Niki’s feet.  
  
“Sometimes I really karking hate you,” Niki frowned in that beautiful way in which she did everything.  
  
Cody turned his head to look back up at the child, and nodded. Sotna smiled and ran to hug them both. Cody and Niki looked at each other awkwardly.  
  
“What am I supposed to do now?” she asked.  
  
“I don’t know,” he admitted.


	3. Soup Meat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wolffe and Gregor adapt to their new arrival.

Seelos  
  
The state news service out of the Mandalore sector was offering heavy coverage of the ‘annexation’ of Concord Dawn. It was in the mother tongue, so only Alis really understood what they were saying. But Wolffe could pick out a few words as he lay on the row of troop transport chairs that served as his bed.  
  
He had just woken from that nightmare he had sometimes that he was the last person left behind marooned on a dead planet. He was sure the news announcer’s voice figured in to the last part of his dream. He got up and dressed fully before he got out to where Alis could see him.  
  
Alis was at the com station, curled up in the chair, wrapped in her foil kit blanket and wearing what looked like pajamas she had brought from home.  
  
Wolffe quietly started making the caf.  
  
“I felt like I was going to throw up, so I got up. I didn’t mean to wake you. My uniform got soaked and it smelled really bad...do you have a washer machine?” she sounded ashamed.  
  
“I can rinse it out in the sink. You...said last night you thought you might have a fever. How is everything?” he asked, trying not to begin the day at an alarming decibel level. He attempted to use his polite waiter voice. Not that he’d ever been a waiter, except for pretend.  
  
She had been watching since early from what he could tell from when he had been awakened by her retching noises.  
  
Alis looked sleepy, “Do you believe these people? They burned everything! Some of those trees were thousands of years old. Where will all the birds go? They even ripped down the temples and the stones of the ancestors. Why wouldn’t they even leave those, even if they wanted to occupy the place? Those sites were beautiful.”  
  
“You look a little pinker than usual. Last couple of days you had in that station, you’re probably extremely dehydrated,” Wolffe was trying to give advice like he would to one of his troopers, but he didn’t know how to command a woman. All the females in the Republic military were either Jedi or in the Navy, so it was a bit novel for him.  
  
“Well check my head, do I feel hot?” she put her hand on her forehead to indicate that he should.  
  
That struck Wolffe as rather casual with the physical contact. They’d just met. He chalked it up to her having the manners of a peasant. But he did as she’d indicated and put his hand on her forehead.  
  
“Well?” she asked.  
  
“Honestly, I’ve got proper thermometers in the first aid kits,” Wolffe removed his hand almost immediately. “But you feel a few grades above human norms. So…I’m going to advise rest and a hydration regimen.”  
  
“My mom used to check by putting her lips on my forehead, that works just as well as any thermometer,” Alis smiled up at him feebly.  
  
“I thought we had a rule against having guests overnight. Who is this chicky?” Gregor came from his section of the walker rubbing his eyes. He’d just woken up. He had trouble remembering Alis for some reason.  
  
“She’s Princess Leia Organa. She dated that one guy from that boy band,” Wolffe vaguely remembered something from the scraps of off world magazines Gregor collected.  
  
“Well alright then,” Gregor said.  
  
“Gregor, we need to run protocol eight twelve,” Wolffe gave an order.  
  
“Um...I forget is eight twelve a severe hangover or throwing an angry drunk into the brig for the night?” Gregor asked Wolffe in a loud whisper.  
  
“A severe hangover, but it also works for dehydration,” Wolffe tried to stay polite, “She hasn’t been drinking.”  
  
“Don’t believe him Gregor, I totally have!” Alis laughed at her own joke, looking a little woozy, “But I refuse to go to this brig you speak of!”  
  
“Well have you got anything with you?” Gregor did his impression of Wolffe with his hand on his hip. “This humorless bastard won’t allow booze.”  
  
Wolffe felt his ears get hot with shame, “Gregor, you know I’m in recovery.”  
  
“I actually prefer we don’t keep the stuff around. I...don’t always like what it does to people,” Alis didn’t seem to be joking about that.  
  
“Well alright then,” Gregor shrugged. Then he went to go get the jumpsuit cushions. He set them up for her as a kind of sick bed near the com station.  
  
Wolffe brought over some salt pills, water, and the thermometer. “Now, I’m going to have to ask you to give your verbal consent for any necessary medical intervention.”  
  
“Wh...what?” Alis sounded a little dazed.  
  
Wolffe held a device to her forehead. She was dangerously warm, “Oh, I don’t know...like any emergency lifesaving procedures. I just...I think you might lose consciousness and I want to make sure I don’t take any unwanted liberties.”  
  
“I think he’s just covering himself in case he can’t find any other kind of NSAID than suppositories. I have told him flat out, I don’t care how sick I get, you don’t go near my butthole,” Gregor clarified.  
  
Alis laughed uncomfortably, “Oh, so that just automatically becomes MY job then?”  
  
Gregor looked confused, “What does?”  
  
Wolffe held up a swab of hydration gel, “Dehydration can be made worse if you are about to menstruate. When was the last period.”  
  
Alis took it and winced, “That tastes terrible.”  
  
Wolffe pinched the skin on her arm lightly to test the elasticity, “Do you hereby give permission for lifesaving procedures to be administered, including pain medication, fever reducers, iv drips, and yes, suppositories or enemas should you be unable to swallow?”  
  
“I don’t want to die,” she answered, threw up on both of them and passed out.  
  
She did sleep. Her temperature rose and she even went into febroid convulsions once. That scared them. She talked in her sleep, so they made a game of answering the things she said as if in earnest. Wolffe was the more qualified medic, so he was the one who had to administer the rehydration gel. He felt conflicted. They had NSAID suppositories that would have reduced the fever, but he really didn’t feel either one of them had the right to administer those without her permission. So he crushed pills into a powdered broth mix for a mushroom soup and fed her a few spoonfuls. She threw up most of it, but some worked and she was able to sleep some more.  
  
Gregor cleaned up her slop bucket and cleaned the clothes as best he could. Wolffe gave her a regimen of fluids, salt, and electrolytes. It burned through a bunch of the drinks they’d gotten from the UP warehouse.  
  
They didn’t really know what else to do while they watched her, so they rehearsed an arrangement of ‘Yub Nub’ with the guitar.  
  
Her fever broke and she was able to make it from water to broth, to a little bit of solid food by evening.  
  
“Curse your youth!” Gregor had yelled at her, "my last hangover recovery took a week."  
  
“Ugh, but now I have cramps like a sonofabitch,” she took the R2 sized bottle off the dash of the walker and took two pills.  
  
Wolffe blushed.  
  
“So, did I hear a guitar earlier?” Alis asked.  
  
“You play?” Wolffe sounded worried. Even if she didn’t, she was probably good enough to know he wasn’t very good.  
  
“I had one,” she said apologetically, “I’d been meaning to practice more, maybe you could help. You know Uncle Rex gave it to me for my birthday.” She lapsed into a Captain Rex impression, “Now Alis, I’m going to give you some advice that a brilliant lady once gave me, she said that a lot of poor girls hang around with men they don’t want to just because they like to sing and he has the instrument. That is why every girl should just have her own. Of course, she said it was the same with drugs. But I don’t condone drugs.”  
  
“Rex did have a way with words,” Wolfe smirked. He still loved that old bastard.  
  
“Oh, you know Rex? Us too,” Gregor said, “Who are you, again?”  
  
Wolffe ignored Gregor, “I’m pretty sure it was my girl who told him that.”  
  
“Thirty two!” Gregor shouted.  
  
\--  
  
Before they began their first round of cards for the evening, Wolffe made an excuse to step out and had smoked a pipe of healing herbs to loosen his fingers for card dealing. If Alis had smelled the smoke or knew what it was, she didn’t say so. So Wolffe decided he was not caught yet.  
  
Wolffe dealt out the cards and Gregor and Alis each took their hands.  
  
“Now, whatever happens next, we need money. On Seelos, everybody’s a hustler if not an all out grifter. The only way get ahead is to out-grift other grifters. You’d think liars would be smart and skeptical, but actually, nobody buys into lies like a liar. That is why real knowledge is the only power, because real information is hard to get. Now, playing cards is a good way to learn how to grift, it requires all the requisite skills. Be aware of other people, be aware of yourself. Read reactions, be able to bluff and misdirect. All the basics. Now, more advanced grifting skills are required to pull off long cons, where the payout is higher but the investment is greater. We are not looking for that. We got the basics and we stay adaptable. Move silently. Little at a time. Nobody getting suspicious. Fly under the radar. If the police sniff out that we got money, they’ll take it and we’ll be back at square one. So let’s not attract their attention,” since the next settlement was a ways away, Wolffe decided to teach some practical skills for survival.  
  
“What characters do you play?” Alis asked  
  
Wolffe laid down a good hand, “I could be anything, my face is very adaptable. People always think they might have seen me before, but they don’t know where from.” Clone humor. He sang at Gregor, “I want to stay like this forever.”  
  
Gregor responded, singing too, “Until we fall into the sky.” He put down an even better hand.  
  
Wolffe continued the tune, “Until the world comes crashing down.”  
  
Alis seemed to enjoy their company, “Uncle Rex is funny, too. Did he ever sing?”  
  
Wolffe rearranged his hand, “He was too self-conscious most of the time. Like his voice choked him right in the throat if he tried. Singing made him emotional and he just couldn’t let the feelings out, or else they’d ALL come out like emotional vomit. But I’ve heard him sing before.”  
  
“When?” she asked.  
  
“After he found our brother Echo. Echo wasn’t able to sing after having all his limbs and some of his organs droidified. He’d gotten blown apart at the Citadel right in front of Rex, we thought he was dead. So when he was found, his lungs were machines, he couldn’t sing anymore like he did. It was a real shame, because he was especially talented. I was trying to teach Echo to play music again with his prostheses while he was in the hospital rehabbing. Between the two of us, we were able to get Rex to sing. It was quiet, but he sounded great, too. Soulful, you know. You can’t fake that kind of hurt. Rex remembered songs Echo used to sing when they were out on campaign,” Wolffe recounted.  
  
Alis had never heard so much about her famous uncle before. He had rarely talked about himself. “I cannot imagine that,” she looked at the cards and started ‘absentmindedly’ tapping her foot on the floor to be distracting. The kid was a natural talent, Wolffe’s inner criminal was so proud.  
  
“Maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. You’ll have to take my word for it. But I’m credible in this case. I know Rex better than anyone,” Wolffe missed his brother. But every time he thought of Rex, he felt like somebody had taken a big fistful of the inside of him and pulled it out as easily as if it were cake.  
  
“Sounds like you were close? I guess he knew you too,” Alis was trying to find something kind to say.  
  
Wolffe hated it when people tried to comfort him, “He ain’t ever bothered to learn shit about me. That narcissist just assumed he knew me because we’re duplicates. Yet he always acted surprised when my feelings were hurt. Just because the reason for them wasn’t tangible to him. And a person can know you only if they want to, so I can’t help but take that personally that he didn’t care to know.”  
  
Alis looked at Gregor. Gregor mouthed the words, ‘poor Wolffe rant’. Alis nodded.  
  
“It’s nothing against you, okay?” Wolffe tried to dial it down.  
  
“Seriously, who hurt you?” Alis asked.  
  
‘Who hasn’t?’ Wolffe thought, but didn’t dare say. It had been a long time since anybody noticed his feelings. Alis was looking at him and waiting as if she really wanted to know. Wolffe couldn’t remember the last time anyone had asked him to tell them something. Most of the time he felt like he was talking in circles muttering to himself like a somnambulist in a cabinet.  
  
“So what’s the plan?” Gregor interrupted the awkwardness. He probably wouldn’t listen to the answer.  
  
“So, the best chance we have for a big payout is that we have to go get the reserves,” Wolffe told him.  
  
“What?” Alis and Gregor both asked.  
  
“Old Declan here,” he knocked on the wall of the walker, “was one of a set of three. We hid the other two as a kind of rainy day fund, since they needed repairs. The guns will fetch quite a bit at salvage if we can find a buyer. We were saving them if we needed replacement things for our home, but this seems like a worthy cause. And we might all die trying, so then nobody needs to worry about anything. We detach the guns, we get them back to a spaceport, sell them, maybe see if we can gamble to increase it, maybe it won’t be worth the risk. We’ll see.”  
  
“Now what’s the bad news? There’s always bad news,” Gregor inquired.  
  
Wolffe exhaled, resigned, “That site is nowhere near here. We’ll have to get past dunes worth of bandits. Just the three of us. No guarantee they are where we left them. And they’re gonna be heavy to haul back. We’ll be slow.”  
  
“Once we get enough to go off world, what do we do?” Alis asked rather pointedly. Wolffe hadn’t said anything about leaving, but she must have assumed. There was nothing for her on Seelos.  
  
“Options we discuss once we know what kind of a budget we’re working with,” Wolffe wasn’t actually sure about that part. He desperately hoped Rex would come back and take the dilemma out of his hands. But he couldn’t tell Alis that. Wolffe had been forced to be the guy with the plan his whole life and it was mentally exhausting. He sighed. “Any other questions?” Wolffe tried to be a respectful leader and at least pretend that other people got a say.  
  
Gregor raised his hand, “Do I still get my per diem, because I never did get to have my hooker in K-Town and I want to try to get it done at the next spaceport before we go jaunting off into the wops.”  
  
Wolffe ran his hand over his hair and the back of his neck. “I thought you didn’t remember anything from Kwymartown. You have been asking me who Alis is for days. Now you say this? You are deliberately trying to make me doubt my sanity. It’s not funny.”  
  
“Don’t throw a massive wobbly, you big baby,” Gregor grumbled, “Not everything is about you!”  
  
Wolffe gave Gregor his full attention, trying to tell him to shut up via telepathy. Gregor was obviously not following conversations well anymore, but Wolffe was not sure if some of his more confusing slip-ups didn’t have a larger pattern he wasn’t seeing. Like there was something Gregor wanted that he didn’t want to say. He hated it when Gregor kept secrets. Wolffe doubted his own sanity before. Maybe he was the crazy one. But he glanced over at Alis and she was looking at him as if about to ask a question. Wolffe wasn’t sure how he could explain the situation without upsetting Gregor. The truth was, Gregor was amnesiac, and he’d had way too many concussions, and he was now being lost to dementia. Wolffe had watched the progress for years, but most people didn’t notice Gregor, so Wolffe and Rex had been able to limit the embarrassment he could cause. Since Wolffe had been alone there, it had been a lot of work. He hurt all the time, from making a living, from being so vigilant, from being so lonely, from being forced to mourn every day about the never-ending loss. Even his best Jedi friend had found him unacceptable to come and die in her war. Poor Wolffe in-karking-deed. But it didn’t change anything so grumbling was the only outlet. And Gregor even complained when he did that.  
  
Alis smiled apologetically as if she understood. Wolffe knew she didn’t, but he was glad for the kindness in the artifice. Then she said, “Uncle Wolffe, why don’t you go out and have a smoke and Gregor and I will practice conspiracy by agreeing to a lie, then we’ll work it into the conversation and see if you can catch us in it in the next round.”  
  
Wolffe wasn’t sure why one little gesture of acceptance made a difference, but it did.  
  
–  
  
Youpee Station, Gumdrop Mountains, Seelos  
  
“Give me a boost,” Alis grabbed a shoulder on each brother, they reflexively formed a basket with two hands and helped her jump to the top of the defensive wall. She pried the cover off of a drain outlet through the wall and disappeared inside. The sluice doors opened a few moments after. Wolffe and Gregor entered into the walled community that housed workers for the fuel company. The security was built around keeping the fuel inside, so the alarms for the small openings in the wall weren’t maintained and could be opened from the inside. They weren’t there to steal fuel, they just wanted to visit the company sponsored settlement without an id check. Once inside, they could move freely as long as they kept their heads down like everybody else.  
  
Since they were about to cross the salt wastes to get to their salvage site, they didn’t want to be stranded. The walker was Imperial equipment, it wouldn’t surprise anybody to see it tapping in to the trans-hemispherical fuel pipeline. Imperial official vehicles were legally authorized to seize anything from any entity public or private. But it was easier if they had passes to the maintenance hatches, instead of prying them by force. A trail of damage would give away their route.  
  
They perused the trading stands that were informally set up around the mine’s entrance. Alis bought a used set of clothes. Choices were sparse, mostly varieties of uniforms and jumpsuits with pockets. But good enough to allow her to throw away her old soiled things. They all paid for shower stalls and a clothes wash. Then, once they were clean and spruced up, Alis and Wolffe dropped Gregor off at the brothel with his hooker budget. He was given half an hour, but he was done in ten minutes and came back down asking to be fed waffles. Alis got excited about that, so Wolffe relented. After breakfast, they went to a caf place on a corridor corner so that they could watch the foot traffic. The company commissary was across the way and Wolffe saw how all the workers entering the portal scanned their company pass cards, which were attached to strings on their belts. So he spent a few minutes deciding how to proceed.  
  
Before he could advise what to do, Alis discreetly walked over and entered the fray of the crowd. Suddenly, she recoiled rather obviously, clutching her backside, “Don’t touch me!” she shouted at top volume. She turned, “Alright, who did that?”  
  
Two workers looked at each other, both of them assuming his colleague was the offender. A lot of these guys had been working for months without pay, they were getting desperate, but the brothel ladies didn’t work on credit. The two workmen got into a shoving match about who was a pervert for doing that to her. Both men seemed to consider themselves the savior, protecting Alis and thus having a shot at comforting her after, and maybe even a chance to take her out. The other guy would be chased off and ridiculed for a little bit. Even though every one of the men had touched their share of girls’ asses without being invited.  
  
Alis threw herself into the crowd as if caught in the mosh pit accidentally as others joined, trying to break up the fight or be on the side of the good guys. She worked her way through the crowd that was gathering and stole a dozen id’s and a few wallets. Wolffe very obviously joined the ranks of the guys trying to check if she was alright. She drew the loot from her sleeve and shoved them in his messenger bag when she hugged him to thank him and say she was alright. Then she tripped into somebody else and the guy offered her a place to sit next to him until the commotion died down.  
  
Like with all the other men who’d tried to comfort her, she very conspicuously said that she was fine and politely refused his offer of a drink.  
  
The facility security was notified of the incident and showed up. Alis was searched and they found nothing on her. Security didn’t even attempt to find the man who’d assaulted her. The combatants had run off. When she told the police about the incident, they asked her what she’d been wearing and how much she’d had to drink. They told her they didn’t believe her and accused her of being a prostitute. A company rep arrived and said that they’d be disinclined to have one slip up ruin the workmen’s records. Labor was scarce out there and the Empire needed them to work, so pursuing it was implied to be unpatriotic. The security didn’t even record her name. Alis was politely asked to leave town, so she did, meeting Wolffe and Gregor at the walker.  
  
“How did you know that would happen?” Wolffe asked. It never occurred to him not to believe her.  
  
“I know what men act like, I’ve been to basic training,” she counted the loot.  
  
Wolffe found himself entirely at a loss for words.  
  
–  
  
Saltsburg  
  
To resupply and spend their last night before crossing the salt wastes, they pressed on to the settlement around a plant that mined salt for a meatpacking company. They had enough of their joopa money to get extra water and equipment.  
  
“So you said we are risking our lives on this adventure,” Alis finally brought up while they were shopping. Wolffe was searching for medical supplies. He tried on a pair of arthritis compression gloves and decided they were worth a try. He put them in his basket.  
  
“Well, best to assume that always. It gives us a reason to celebrate beforehand. Think of it as the last Life Day you’ll ever have. What did you used to do for holidays with your mommy?”  
  
“I don’t remember much. And Uncle Rex didn’t really know, I mean...he knew her, he remembered everything about her. But...they didn’t have much time, you know? I was too young to remember years or dates, just flashes here and there, like a song will come on, or a thing will remind me of her and I can remember the feeling of her plain as day.”  
  
“What happened to her?” Wolffe asked.  
  
“I guess she convinced some clones to undergo some illegal medical procedure. She helped clones run away after the war. The government was euthanizing them and she helped them try to escape. She was carted off for treason in the Emperor’s urban dissent purges.”  
  
“So she...knew about what that medical procedure did, what it was for?” Wolffe realized this might mean he might know something that could get them all in trouble.  
  
“If she did, she never said to anyone,” Alis shrugged and looked at a rack of vests, “They questioned me about it at the workhouse a few times. They thought she knew, she said they could kill her, she wouldn’t be able to tell. So instead of killing her, they took me away and imprisoned her for life.”  
  
“They probably wanted to know if Rex told her anything. He had access to a lot of classified information, a lot of things he wasn’t supposed to know. Government secrets and all,” Wolffe had lowered his voice to a serious whisper.   
  
Alis looked at him as if he was going to tell her, but he seemingly changed subject.   
  
“The less you know the better.”  
  
“Why?” she looked hurt.  
  
“Some people just don’t tolerate alternative narratives. Canonical to a fault, they are. It’s like they think if nobody catches them in a lie, they can will away inconvenient facts as easily as erasing the existence of a planet from archive maps. So they will stop at nothing to make people with information they don’t like to disappear. Know this kind of liar, my dear one, they are the most frightening. They’re the ones that you need to flee with all due haste if you can.”  
  
“What if you can’t retreat?” Alis crossed her arms as if she was cold. She seemed to know the kind of relentless abusers he referred to.  
  
“My point is, run away when something scares you, hide. Lock the doors and hope they don’t have blasters. That is not just about someone you are scared might hurt you, if you ever get into a situation, like you’re with a date or something, you don’t have to apologize to anybody, you can get up and leave at any time, you don’t owe anybody any part of yourself in exchange for anything. Your safety is what matters. Trust your instincts.”  
  
“Look, I know what you’re trying to say. I’m sorry I worried you the other day. I just thought my plan was going to work and it did. I wouldn’t do anything I wasn’t comfortable doing. I’m an adult. I don’t want to run away from you and Gregor, you know,” she cut through the poodoo.  
  
The girl deserved a hell of a lot better than being stuck there. Wolffe sniffed. Now he really hoped Rex got there soon, though he wasn’t sure he wanted her running off with the Rebellion either. “Look, I’m sorry about the shit sliding downhill thing, before. I just don’t know how to deal with things sometimes. I swear, I yell, I complain. But I never stop trying. I just didn’t know how I was going to tell you the truth knowing how disappointed you were. I am a very mentally ill war veteran who has been forced to go unmedicated for years. I can’t take care of myself. I really should be on a street corner drinking from a bottle like my friend Spots Podal. But I won’t have Gregor living that way, he deserves better. He’s a damned mentally ill war veteran who no one else cares about. And taking care of him is a job I barely do successfully.”  
  
Then Alis went and pushed him over the edge, “I want to help. Even if Uncle Rex comes back for me, I will make sure to tell him the danger he put us all in. He ought to hear. I can more than pull off a poor Wolffe rant by now. That’ll show him.”  
  
Wolffe didn’t care whether she was joking or not, it was sweet.  
  
Then she had to go and make him feel old, “Sorry about the joke about your love life before. You talk about your girl a lot. Obviously you love her. You’re always saying how wonderful she is. She didn’t seem to like you much, though.”  
  
“Who Mahti? You thought My Girl was Mahti? We’re not…I mean, we are, but that’s mostly out of convenience. People got needs, you can learn about it when you get older.”  
  
Alis looked dubious.  
  
“I’m pretty sure all relationships in this universe are doomed to fail,” Wolffe wiped his nose in agitation. It was itchy. “So it doesn’t matter what one you’re in, it will crap out sooner or later.”  
  
Alis looked disappointed.  
  
“I wasn’t always pathetic, you know. Every damn time somebody needed to be pulled out of a planet of flaming wreckage, they knew who to call. I was able to maintain a job. And yes, even a relationship. My Girl was perfect. Talented, beautiful, smart. Everywhere she went, because of her species, because of her color, because of her gender, she was subjected to abuse. She suffered it like it was an unpleasant mundane task and got on with her life. Forward momentum like a train. For whatever reason, I got hit by it and haven’t been able to do much but limp around with my broken pieces of soup meat ever since.”  
  
“That’s weirdly sweet, I guess,” Alis smiled a little.  
  
“So she had this sadistic rule that the minute I said the ‘L’ word, all we had would disappear. It’s natural to say stuff when you’re getting down. At first it was stuff like, ‘I want you,’ ‘I need you now,’ you know, stuff you can pawn off on the heat of the moment. Then that turned into the more desperate, ‘I want to stay like this forever’ and ‘I never want to let you go’ and ‘I’d do anything for you’. Impossible goals, but just some way to try to express a feeling without the proper terminology,” Wolffe realized too late that the cork was off on his emotional vomit. He looked at her as if he’d just ruined her shoes with it.  
  
“What happened?” Alis looked at him with tears standing in her eyes, caring about how he felt.  
  
Wolffe sniffed casually, pretending the tears weren’t there, “Stuff. Life. I guess if you really want to, you can try to march over mountains in iron shoes to the ends of the planet to achieve your heart’s desire. But I haven’t been able to even find my walking stick. All I know is, I don’t want her to see me like this.”  
  
“Thirty-two,” Gregor called from the background.  
  
“What,” Alis sniffed and wiped her eyes.  
  
“Long story,” Wolffe excused.  
  
On a cliff overlooking the salt wastes  
  
“What are we looking at?” Gregor asked.  
  
“Didn’t I say we were doing a thing?” Wolffe put his hand on his hip.  
  
“What thing are we doing?” Alis asked.  
  
“And who are you?” Gregor asked Alis in all sincerity.  
  
“Don’t you know I’m Countess Ursa Wren?” Alis lied obviously.  
  
“Su cuy'gar! Ni slanar Mandalore o'r Moonlight Transit me'sen,” Wolffe laughed in purposefully mispronounced Mando’a. The phrase had come from a tourist phrasebook sponsored by a shipping company he’d seen once.  
  
Gregor shook his head, “Your pronunciation is terrible.”  
  
“It’s supposed to be, that’s the joke?” Wolffe threw up his hands.  
  
“What joke?” Gregor scratched his head.  
  
“Like...the Wrens pronounce Mando’a badly?” Alis guessed.  
  
Gregor seemed to be seeing her for the first time, “And you are….?”  
  
Wolffe waved him off, “Okay, so here is the thing we’re doing, we stand here and imagine a wide shot. Then I say something like, ‘Well, all that’s between us and our payout is a few thousand kilometers of merciless desert full of thieves and raiders’,” Wolffe said, “This is where the fun begins.”  
  
“You couldn’t do better than that?” Gregor shook his head. Then he adopted an affected stance to look like Wolffe trying to be dignified, in a hero pose with his hand on his hip, “If you come with us, you're in this life for good.”  
  
“That is ridiculous, I would never say something that absolutely absurd,” Wolffe criticized.  
  
“How about, ‘Let me give you some advice. Assume everyone will betray you. And you will never be disappointed,’” Gregor did his Wolffe impression.  
  
“That does sound like him, sometimes,” Alis joined in.  
  
Wolffe turned abruptly and stormed back to the walker ladder, “You have both just ruined my thing. Can we just forget it and get going.”


End file.
